


Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain

by Malteaser



Series: The Daemons of UNCLE [3]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: 1960s, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, THRUSH, UNCLE - Freeform, when your soul is on display you get really good at hiding yourself in plain sight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/Malteaser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short little pieces about some of my favorite THRUSH villains and their daemons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Folami

Folami appeared to be a wolf- a small one, granted, but daemons had been shrinking in size since the Industrial Revolution. It suited his purposes for others to think so- canine daemons were the most common of all mammalian daemons, and the most trusted. When they moved in scientific circles, surrounded by daemons settled as snakes, cats and the occassional hawk, she stuck out: but it wasn’t uncommon for those with wolf daemons to work in fields that required a certain aggressiveness, and he’d needed that- both as a black man working in academia and as someone who designed weapons for a living. 

Kuryakin had understood that straight away, but then again, he would. His daemon, a dhole, might be from an omnivorous species, but still dholes were still canids- predators and pack hunters. He was a man of science too. James had been worried about that at first- their areas of expertise overlapped, and what work of the Russian's THRUSH could find was quite good- but as it turned out, he needn’t have bothered. Kuryakin, for all that he so obviously wanted a demonstration of his molecutronic gun, was in pure enforcement agent mode. He was too busy guarding against external threats to question to precepts of this scenario.

His file and all his interviews said that Folami was a wolf, and she looked the part: therefore Folami was a wolf. He had a great deal of statistics to back up the fact that his molecutronic gun was a functional weapon: therefore it was a functional weapon. It all fit. That didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t true.

Folami was a hybrid daemon: she may have been part wolf, but she was also part coyote. A coywolf, in common parlance.

Coyotes were called wily for a reason, and it had nothing to do with Warner Brothers. You see, coyotes have no fear of humans- it wasn’t terribly unusual to find one playing with someone’s poorly supervised toddler. Or appearing to play anyway: once the coyote was sure of the child’s trust, they stopped playing and started killing.

James tamped down on the urge to laugh as Kuryakin drove away with the “molecutronic gun” loaded onto the back of his truck. Once he was out of sight, Folami dislodged herself from under the porch, shaking the gold dust that had been used to simulate their death from her fur as she did so.

“Well done, Dr. Febray,” she said. “Ready to blow up UNCLE?”

“Yes,” he replied. “More than. It won't be long before Mr. Kuryakin brings our bomb into UNCLE New York, and then the dominos will really start to fall.”

* * *

[Folami](http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/gta/2009/08/15/meet_the_coywolf/meet_thecoywolf.jpeg.size.xxlarge.letterbox.jpeg) is a Yoruba language name meaning "respect and honor me". 


	2. Modthryth

It was amazing the difference a single word made.

Take ‘vixen’ for example- it meant female fox, which is what his Modthryth was. But it carried such connotations of sexuality- and his own sexuality was something he had always put on display- that it blocked out everything else.

“My daemon is a vixen,” Harry would say, and everyone would forget that a fox of either gender was the daemon of liars and deceivers, of clever manipulative souls. Or else if they did remember, they put it down as something that was an extremely latent trait of his. What kind of capacity for deception did a man who advertised his scandals with all the enthusiasm of several tabloids possess? It certainly couldn’t be a great deal.

That was, of course, exactly how he wanted it.

He padded quietly into the hall of the apartment, Modthryth staying where she was, curled around the woman’s hare-daemon as her eyes glittered gold in the murkiness of the streetlight pouring through a half-closed window. He found the seam in the wall easily enough: it was but a moment before he had the wallpaper pulled back, exposing the metallic wire that ran into the apartment’s basement.

He wondered, not for the first time, who it was who listened in to the lives of Stasi mistresses. Perhaps it was the General himself tonight- it would hardly be the first time, and he highly doubted that the man hadn’t heard that Harry was coming tonight.

Smiling at the double entendre, he quickly implanted the transmitter. It would go to his office at UNCLE, not to THRUSH, as they had demanded. It might cause him some trouble, but he knew that if he let them push him an inch, they wouldn’t stop until they had the whole mile. He was hardly going to do some honeypot assignment at their behest.

He smoothed back the wallpaper, and stood, turning back to the bedroom. Modthryth blinked behind him, as the hare’s ears began the wave in front of her face.

“Leaving so soon, Mr. Beldon?”  Ingrid asked, her eyes still closed. Even in the murk, she was a lovely sight. And even half asleep, she would know what to do.

“Of course not,” Harry replied. “The day has hardly begun.”

* * *

[Modthryth](http://www.gschneiderphoto.com/gallery3/var/albums/wildlife/red_fox/red_fox_vixen-5608.jpg?m=1294941126) is the name of a minor character in Beowulf. There's a pretty good artciel covering all the various theories about both her and the meaning of her name [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modthryth) on Wikipedia. 


	3. Celestin

Angelique and Celestin weren’t their given names, but they were their real ones. They had chosen them for themselves, and hadn’t regretted a single thing since.

Not even last night, as near-disastrous as it had been.

“No spiders?” Napoleon asked.

“Only me, darling,” Angelique told him. Celestin laughed quietly from his perch on her shoulder. Napoleon and Artemisa exchanged looks before Napoleon turned back to her, smiling. He took her hand, and every bit the gentleman, he open the passenger door for her, before opening the back door for his daemon. Celestin left her shoulder and crawled down the back of the seat and Napoleon took the wheel.

It looked like a show of trust on her part. It wasn’t. Napoleon could drive her into UNCLE custody, of course, but she could just as easily rigged the car to explode, or the wheel to administer sleeping gas. Celestin might be many times smaller than Artemisa, but she would bet his venom against Artemisa’s claws any day.

Napoleon knew all that, and she knew that he knew, and he knew that she knew that he knew- and yet neither of them had the slightest idea what would happen next. It was one of the reasons why their games went on _ad infinitum_ , rather than _ad nauseam_.

“Any requests?” Napoleon asked as they approached the intersection.

“Surprise me,” Angelique said.

“That’s uncommonly generous of you,” Napoleon said.

“Well, you will be paying,” Angelique told him.

“Still, I can’t help but feel like there’s something you’re not telling me,” Napoleon replied.

“When do I ever tell you everything?” Angelique asked.

“Oh you never tell me everything,” Napoleon agreed. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know.”

Angelique threw back her head and laughed.

“Or that I can’t guess,” Napoleon added, sounding somewhat hurt.

“Afraid you might get caught in my web?” Angelique asked.

“Well, I’m already in your car,” he pointed out. “It’s not quite a parlor, but I’m not sure how much difference it makes in this case.”

“And how are you enjoying being a fly?”

“It had its merits, though you seem to enjoy it more than I do.”

“Oh?”

“Aren’t your bosses mad?” His eyes flicked significantly to the rear-view mirror. “Shouldn’t you be finding some place to _burrow_ into until the storm passes?”

He’d read up on the habit’s of Celestin’s species. _That_ was flattering, but- “Please.”

They were each silent for a long moment- long enough for her to begin to wonder whether or not Napoleon had a destination in mind at all.

“You’ve missed something obvious, darling.”

“I have?”

“You did notice what form Professor Amadeus’ daemon took, did you not? And what form Vulpe had had before the War’s end?”

“Our records indicated that she’d settled as a fox. But she was a wolf.”

“Not just any wolf. The same wolf as the Fuehrer’s daemon.”

Napoleon was silent for a moment, considering. “But- when he started waking up- the Dust- how would that?”

“Oh, I don’t mean to say they were literally the same daemon. But you’ve heard the same theories everyone else has- put someone under enough strain, and they’ll have a mental collapse, and their daemons will shift once more.” Angelique explained. “THRUSH has uses for people that deranged, certainly- but scientific research isn’t among them.”

Napoleon smiled fondly. “And you’re still not telling me everything.”

“Always,” Angelique promised.

* * *

[Celestin](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_14vlJfQgyU/TcG2dC8GyyI/AAAAAAAAABk/Ij7DVlkhdIg/s1600/Haplopelma_lividum__Cobalt_Blue_.jpg), who has been covered in [this](../../720171) previous installment. 


End file.
